Valve Unveil Portal 2 TV Ad

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Valve decided to make their own TV commercial for Portal 2. This was because, said marketing VP Doug Lombardi, “We’ve had many creative kick-off meetings with agencies over the years, and you’d be shocked by the treatments that have come back. Copycat treatments. Cliché treatments. Treatments that reveal the agency wasn’t listening in the initial meeting.” So instead Valve opted to make their own advertisment, in an eight week project.

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Why’d they have to go and spoil it by saying that the actual game will be nothing like this? Okay so it perhaps should be commended that a company admits its marketing is bullshit before the game is released. But it does make it a rather pointless exercise to carry on with it. They’d be better off showing us some actual gameplay videos of what will actually be in the game now.

I must be blind. Where do they say that? From what I understand there will, in fact, be fun in the final product. And science. And two robots (in the multiplayer mode). Or were you referring to the face that this is pre-rendered rather than in-engine footage?

What they’re saying is that the game will be simplified and a lot easier than the first game. It will be designed with controllers in mind so even people with reactions of a sloth can join in. They’ll be there to hold our hands every step of the way.

Now that’s not the impression I got from the trailers at all, it must be said. In fact some bits almost looked too difficult.

Valve does this weird thing with trailers where they use the source engine as their animation platform, and then set Source to “render mode.” So technically, it is “in engine”, but not the visual quality is too high for real time.

The sequel is going to be easier? My interest level just went up a bit. I enjoyed Portal, but I haven’t finished it. I reached (what I assume to be) the final “boss-battle”, but couldn’t do it quickly enough.

A lot of people were raising concerns that with the new gameplay mechanics and the videos shown so far, that the game would actually be harder, not easier.
Valve basically said that their objective all along with Portal 2 wasn’t to make it more difficult (or easy for that matter) than the first game, but to give it a greater breadth as an experience.

“One of the things we learned after releasing Portal 1”, Wolpaw told us, “was that there were a couple puzzles in Portal 1 that required some sort of twitchy ninja skills to actually execute the solution.” He added that Valve monitored the game on Steam and that those who quit the game “almost universally” quit after playing one of the two puzzles that are most difficult to execute. The biggest pleasure of Portal, said Wolpaw, is the “aha moment,” the moment when a player understands the puzzle and discovers its solution. “If you then struggle with the controller for twenty minutes to execute the solution that you already know,” said Wolpaw, “almost universally we found that it was frustrating people.”

Valve has thus endeavored not to make the puzzles in Portal 2 too “ninja-ish.” Valve has also “tweaked the physics a little bit.” For example, actually getting through portals is easier now. “In Portal 1,” said Wolpaw, “if you were flying through a portal and you sort of clipped it a little bit, chances are you’d bounce back out and have to redo it, so we made that a little more forgiving.”

As for the apparent mind-numbing difficulty on display in the Portal 2 videos released so far, Wolpaw noted that trailers have to be entertaining. “Someone slowly thinking about a puzzle” doesn’t make for a good trailer, he said. “You have to sweeten it a little by having someone do some crazy ninja moves,” though the downside is that some people may believe the game is more difficult than it actually is.

So yeah, I’m not really willing to apply the whole “dumbed down for consoles” spiel.

They’re not trying to make a game that’s easy for console gamers to get to grips with. They’re trying to make a game that’s easy for your mom to get to grips with.

Download Portal Prelude if you want more twitchy gameplay for the original Portal. I also hope that Portal 2 will get some sweet mods that add crazy twitchy puzzles. I like to keep myself on the edge otherwise I’ll loose all the hand/eye coordination that I’ve built up over the years :)

Neatly done – gets the main game concepts across well, although, yeah, it’s hard to say how this will come across to someone who’s never heard of Portal before – hopefully it will get them interested. (Certainly, it’s a better attempt at luring a new demographic than just whacking in a load of thrash metal and cutscenes, which seems to be a common tactic).

That tangentialy reminds me of the TV ad for Brutal Legend, which is about the only time an ad SHOULD have thunderous metal playing all the way through. Instead, it got this:

Pop-rock jingle wank. Oh dear. Valve have the right idea – game developers should just make their own adverts, because they know what the game is and who they’re aiming it at. Ad agencies don’t have a clue.

No, Portal is available for separate purchase both on Steam (since launch) and at retail (at least, if anyone still stocks it). Valve/EA broke up the retail Orange Box into separate SKUs about six months after its first release.

“Valve/EA broke up the retail Orange Box into separate SKUs about six months after its first release.”
Ah, yes, sorry, I knew about the PC versions doing this, I was referring to the XB360 version. I think there is a standalone downloadable Portal version you can get from the Live store (or however it works), but I thought that the Orange Box on the XB360 was only available as the OB compilation on disc. But my point was that these non-OB Portal copies might not be as obviously available to the typical retail-going parent as the Orange box is, and hence… Well now my joke is ruined, but oh well. :)

You’re right, the split up was only for the PC versions. And yes, Portal is available to purchase from Xbox Live Arcade for 1200 wacky points, which is about 10 squids; and it comes with extra levels from this map pack.

Aww. It’s cute, but unfortunate that they didn’t showcase the humor or the nature of/general idea behind the game. Probably won’t matter anyway — I assume most of those who played and completed the first have already preordered, so…

From the link to the article: “Portal 2 is distributed by EA and is due April 21st on Xbox 360, PC and PS3″. Why? Dont Valve just use steam? Or are they talking about retail? Why on earth would Valve use a publisher?

For the same reason they partnered with EA for retail distribution of The Orange Box, and Left 4 Dead, and Left 4 Dead 2. EA has the experience and contracts in place to manufacture and distribute boxes with shiny plastic discs in them around the world. Valve are essentially subcontracting this aspect of the release to EA.

This is completely different to the traditional developer/publisher relationship, as Valve is not funded by EA and so retains sole control of their game.

Wow, I’d not noticed that the ESRB age rating was so low (of course, it remains to be seen what PEGI gives it). This is a good thing, I suppose, though it’s still surprising. Presumably Chell in the singleplayer can still be crushed, shot, burned, disintegrated, subsumed by toxic waste, etc. – how do these ratings work again?

Portal 2
Platform: Macintosh, Windows PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Rating: Everyone 10+
Content descriptors: Fantasy Violence, Mild Language
Rating summary:
This is an action-adventure game in which players assume the role of Chell, a human who is trapped in a scientific testing facility. From a first-person perspective, players solve numerous physical puzzles as they navigate through post-apocalyptic environments. Players use a ‘portal gun’ to open transportation gateways. Throughout the game, players must avoid hazards such as stationary gun turrets, toxic substances, poisonous gas, and giant pistons; some sequences are accompanied by realistic gunfire. Robot droids can also be destroyed; for example, in one boss battle, players must defeat a robot by throwing small bombs. The words ‘damn’ and ‘hell’ can be heard in the dialogue.

The “Fantasy” bit of “Fantasy Violence” is important. They define fantasy violence as “Violent actions of a fantasy nature, involving human or non-human characters in situations easily distinguishable from real life.”

I am so completely sold on those robots. They have more personality than any talking character I’ve seen in a Valve game in a long time, I’d even daresay more so than GlaDOS. In fact, more character than a lot of talking characters in mainstream games over the past few years.

A lot of this could be to do with how they’re not jaded space marines, or jaded soldiers, or jaded adventurers, but robots who’re just discovering the world, full of naivety and wonder, and just beginning to figure out how everything works. That’s an idea I can get behind, because it makes them genuinely interesting to me. I’ve little interest in Portal 2’s single player campaign, but am I ever intrigued by the co-op. I’m going to be buying it just for the co-op, I imagine.

Valve have been great at this sort of thing for some while now. Just look at Dog.

They’re also great at bringing character to a genre that normally makes use of placeholders with Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead.

Which is where a potential problem lies here actually, you can use voices to breath life into multiplayer games, and you can pull off great emotion with silent characters in single player, but silent characters in multiplayer? How does one go about reinforcing emotion in these robots when they are largely restricted to player controlled animations?

I was talking about more than just the animation alone though. *points at his post.*

I’m well aware that Valve have been grand with animations for a while now, and many a time I’ve brought up the quality of facial animations in Source and how well they’ve been used. It’s a safe bet then that I’m also aware of Dog. So I’ll clarify me post just to ensure that it’s completely crystal clear! I mean, it can’t hurt, it saves other people from getting confused and all.

Right. Point is this: Valve have been and are good at doing animations. Yes, of course. That’s a given. They’re splendid at it. Marvelous even. But they haven’t done so much in the way of characterful animation, body language, visual cues, and things that would carry a character off without any spoken words whatsoever. The sort of animation that really brings something to life, and goes well beyond the simple superlative adeptness at animation that Valve pulled off in their prior games.

I think Butler said it best when he mentioned the Pixar factor. That’s a great point. And I’m sorry but their animations just hadn’t reached that point before now, where you could actually see emotion rather than just hearing it in the voice of a voice-actor, where the visuals were compelling enough to actually be fun by the merit of the visuals alone, where you could relate to what the characters were and are doing, again, without the need for spoken word. It’s an almost magical element that’s been lost from recent animation.

Disney was great at it, so is Pixar, Dreamworks too. The thing is is that the qualities of these two robots are kind of like the qualities of Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon. And that’s some bloody high praise indeed. The robots are a bit silly, yes, but at the same time they seem more alive to me than Valve’s entire cast of characters put together. That is, to say it again, probably what Butler was referring to as the Pixar factor. And this is precisely the element I’m talking about here.

I’m hoping for more of this sort of animation, where they have characters who’ll be able to pull off this level of… well, character and personality. I’m sorry to say it, but those robots have more character in one of their servos than Alyx has in her entire body. Attractive to some she may be, but Miss Congeniality she is not. And yes, this is all my opinion. Of course it is. And to wrap all of this up – if they continue with this sort of thing, in other games, then I’ll be a very happy man indeed.

To be honest, I’m a bit bored of serious games in serious settings where everything is so serious that everyone seems to have forgotten the very merits of imagination and creativity. So something like the co-op mode of Portal 2 is a breath of fresh air for me. I just hope it won’t be a one-off.

But animation is important, especially when its how your achieving this character, and while trailers and ads are nice I have no idea how Valve are going to pull this off when they become player controlled in game.